When I started my blogging journey I never imagined that it could change my life in so many ways! Now blogging is an important part of my life and it offered me the chance to have a job that I really love!

I started this blog in December 2016 but I didn’t really focus on it until March 2017. That was the moment when I decided to become more intentional about my blogging journey. I started to put more time and effort into growing my blog and it was totally worthwhile!

I’ve learned so much in the past year! I took several courses and I invested in many tools and resources. And I’ve discovered a lot of helpful tips!

But one of the most important things that made a difference for me was interacting with other bloggers and learning from their experience. This kind of support was so important! And it still is!

I’m very grateful for all the help and support that I’ve received in the last year! This is why I decided to help other bloggers too by sharing my blogging journey and all the tips and ideas that help me grow my blog.

I’ve started this last year but I wasn’t as intentional about it as I would have wanted. And I felt bad about this. So a few days ago, when I wrote my goals for the second quarter of the year, I decided to focus more on this. One of the ways to do this is publishing monthly blog reports. And I hope that they will be inspiring for other bloggers!

Why I decided to publish these blog reports

For me, discovering tips and ideas that other bloggers share has always been helpful!

I hope that my reports will also help other bloggers find ideas and resources that will allow them to grow their blogs!

Also, I think that these reports will be a nice way to keep track of my blogging journey every month. And I’m pretty sure that it would be nice to look back at these reports one year from now.

Still, there is one thing that I decided to do differently.

Many bloggers share a lot of numbers in their reports: traffic, social media stats, income, etc. While I often do find them inspiring, I think that they also make room for a lot of comparisons.

In my opinion, the most important metric to take into account is growth. Every blogging journey is unique and comparing stats and numbers is not always a good idea.

This is why I decided that the only metric that I will share in my blog reports is growth. And I totally recommend that you measure your success based on the progress that you make and not by comparing your journey with anybody else’s journey.

Now let’s dive into the report for the last 3 months. Usually, I write monthly reports but the last months were so busy that I didn’t get the chance to write detailed reports. So this report will include 3 months: May, June, and July, some of the best months that I ever had as a blogger.

What I did these months (and helped me)

Here are the main things that I did these months and that helped me grow my blog:

1. Creating my first 2 products

I wanted to create my own products for a long time but I was so scared to do it! Now that I’ve already launched 2 ebooks I am sorry that I didn’t start earlier because it has been a great experience!

My first ebook was the Playful Mom Challenge Kit and it was launched in May. It was the first time ever that I prepared a launch so everything was completely new to me. I only promoted the ebook to my email list and I was happy with the results so I didn’t invest in any social media promotion. I might try this in the future but it’s not one of my priorities.

The second product was the Family Travel Bundle that was launched in June. This bundle was meant to be my first product but it took me a long time to find the right illustrations for it so in the meantime I created the other ebook.

When I finally found the illustrations that I wanted, the first ebook was already ready for launch. At first, I wasn’t sure if it’s a good idea to launch a second product so close after the first one but I also didn’t want to delay it because this product is a great fit for summer vacations.

Overall it has been an awesome experience and it gave me a lot of motivation to keep creating products and even creating my own online shop.

*** I will prepare a separate article about everything I learned from launching these products so if you have any questions about this please let me know.

photo credit: Rawpixel.com / shutterstock.com

2. Focusing on a new strategy for Pinterest

In the last months, Pinterest was one of my biggest frustrations. I knew that it has a lot more potential to drive traffic to my blog but I couldn’t seem to figure out a good strategy.

After trying many strategies (and wasting a lot of time doing this), I finally found the best resource for building my Pinterest strategy! It’s called The Pinterest Launch Plan and was created by Jennifer Maker.

Jennifer is also the creator of the List Love Master Course, the course that helped me build my email list and create an engaged community of subscribers.

She is one of my blogging role models and I always trust her recommendations so when she announced that she will launch an ebook about Pinterest I was one of the first people who bought it. And I’m so glad that I did this!

I started implementing her strategy on June 21 and I followed it daily until July 7. Then I went on a 3-week vacation and I couldn’t focus on the strategy on a daily basis. Still, even with limited time to implement the tips in the ebook, I saw an increase that I’ve never seen before.

It is the first time when my reach on Pinterest is greater than 1 million and I hope to be able to maintain the growth in the next months.

I am confident that the strategy will bring even better results if I invest more time in implementing it so this is one of my main goals for August.

3. Coaching and mastermind groups

The fact that these last 3 months were some of the best months of my blogging journey is mainly thanks to blogging coaching and mastermind groups. I’ve learned a lot by being part in both coaching and mastermind programs and they helped me overcome my limiting beliefs.

I plan to continue this in the next months because I’m sure that it will give me more focus and direction in my blogging journey.

Wins and fails

The main wins in the last 3 months

Interacting more with my subscribers

I was afraid that the two launches and the sales emails will affect the relationship that I’ve built with my subscribers but this wasn’t the case. On the contrary, I received more emails from my readers and I felt that my email list is more engaged.

Finally finding a good Pinterest strategy

I wrote above more about this but I couldn’t omit this big win from my list.

Diversifying my income by adding the income from selling my own products

I am a big fan of diversifying income sources so adding the income from selling my own product to my affiliate income and ad income has been a great win for me. I still need to learn how to maintain this income in the next months but I hope to be able to find a strategy that will help me do this.

photo credit: fizkes / shutterstock.com

The fails that I’ve experienced in the last 3 months

Content creation (in July)

Overall these 3 months were very productive. But July turned out to be a very bad month when it comes to content creation. I haven’t published any post in July because I either worked on other projects or I was on vacation. I know that I needed a break after some busy months but I also missed writing and I plan to focus more on this in August.

Time management (in July)

In July I also experienced one of my least productive months ever! The vacation completely changed my schedule and it affected me more than I expected.

I even skipped sending 2 newsletters and this has never happened before so I’m determined to get back on track this month.

How my plan from April went

Here are the goals that I mentioned in my last report and an update about them:

Focus on finding a better strategy for Pinterest: Done 🙂

Launch and promote my ebook: Done (I launched the ebook in May and also launched another product in June)

Create more content: Failed (July wasn’t a good month for content creation so overall I didn’t accomplish my goal)

Update more old posts and create new pins for them using the new templates from the toolkit: Done (I used a different template but I managed to update many old posts)

My plans for next month

It’s hard to make a list of goals specifically for August because I use the 12 week year strategy so my goals are created for a whole quarter.

But I will include here some of the plans that I hope to put into practice this month:

Complete a writing challenge and write 500 words daily until the end of the month

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About Me

Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Raluca, and I'm here to share my stories and inspire you with tips and ideas about parenting, travel, and building a happy family! Read More…

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Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Raluca, and I'm here to share my stories and inspire you with tips and ideas about parenting, travel, and building a happy family! Read More…